Sunday
by Singofsolace
Summary: Emma doesn't believe in God, but sometimes she wishes that she did. Even though it shouldn't matter, she doesn't want to spend Easter alone, so she finds herself at Regina's door. (In which Regina learns that egg-decorating and chocolate-eating are customary on this auspicious day). Emma/Regina friendship.


A/N:Emma doesn't want to spend Easter alone. (SwanQueen if you squint). Please let me know what you think, and if this story should be continued.

Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT

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When Emma was fourteen, she had a relatively decent foster family. She says decent and not "good" or "kind" because the father was racist and sexist and the mousy mother had all sorts of other prejudices, but they fed her well and didn't beat her and took her to church on Sundays, where she could sit for an hour and be left alone. Church, for Emma, was an opportunity to allow her mind to drift away; her foster family may control what she wore and where she went but for an hour every Sunday, they could not tell her what to think or what to feel. All they could do was sit beside her and listen to the priest drone on about sin and damnation and the innumerable horrifying punishments in store for nonbelievers.

Emma rarely paid attention to the readings. Sometimes her eyes would glaze over while she stared at the ten-foot cross hanging above the altar and she had to pinch herself to keep her wits about her.

When it would come time to pray, Emma didn't know what to do with herself. She would watch as her foster mother bowed her head and got this peaceful look, as though the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. The woman really wasn't all that bad, seeing as she had to live with such a sexist bastard of a husband, but Emma wasn't in the habit of making excuses for people. Though, with that look of peace on her usually pinched face, her foster mother looked like someone who could be warm if she wanted to be. Someone who could love and be loved.

Emma remembers her first (and last) Easter celebration with this family. They gave her a dress that was robin's-egg blue and made her look about four years younger than she was. Her foster mother fussed over her unruly blonde curls but smiled when Emma decided to wear the silly hat that had been bought for the occasion. She didn't remember her foster mother smiling very often, but when she did, Emma could fool herself into thinking that they were actually a family.

The church was packed for Easter Sunday. The blonde opted to stand in the back so that her pregnant "cousin" could have more room in the overcrowded pew. When it came time to pray, the cold ground dug into her knobby knees and she closed her eyes.

She prayed that this family would be her last. As much as she despised her foster father, he was relatively harmless and didn't really pay attention to her, which was so much better than it could be. She prayed that nothing would go wrong for two more years and then she could leave and only visit on Christmas and Easter, if she visited at all. She didn't feel obligated to this family, didn't feel that she was truly a part of t, but she could pretend. She prayed one day she would have a real family of her own.

Six months later, around her fifteenth birthday, she gets into a bad fight at school and is suspended. Her foster father is so angry that she winds up having to leave. Her next family is the worst she's ever had and the father is a drunk and the mother never smiles and sometimes they forget her name and they don't take her to church.

Emma doesn't believe in God, but sometimes she wished she did.

.

There are no churches in Storybrooke. This shouldn't bother Emma, and it doesn't. Not really, anyway. She doesn't know how or why she knows it's Easter, and certainly with all of the insanity surrounding their ongoing battle with the wicked witch, she shouldn't have minded that the holiday had arrived and no one was any the wiser.

But still, she remembers a blue dress and a silly hat and a day when there were smiles and laughs and lots of food she was normally never allowed to eat laid out on a table for all to enjoy. She remembers family, lots, with little kids running everywhere and adults gossiping over bowls of chips and glasses of wine. She remembers her foster mother carrying a huge ham onto the dining room table and shooing the children away from the desserts so as to ensure that their appetites weren't spoiled. She remembers how much warmer the house seemed with toddlers chasing one another around the legs of the table and teenagers like herself pointedly ignoring their parents and stealing sips of wine or bottles of beer when they weren't looking.

Easter may not hold much religious significance to her, especially since that was the only foster family she ever had who celebrated the holiday, but she knew what it meant to most people, and was sad to realize that living in a town of storybook characters meant that even if there were such a being as Peter Cottontail, he was probably a human and likely worked at the supermarket stacking egg cartons or something.

Emma is surprised to find that in her wanderings around the town (she wasn't looking for a church that she knew wasn't there. _She wasn't_) she has wound up at the mayor's house. She doesn't want to be alone when she feels this lost.

She doesn't remember ringing the doorbell, but hardly a moment has passed and Regina has opened the door. She takes one look at the blonde's messy hair and glassy eyes and steps back to let her in.

"Ms. Swan?"

Emma walks right past her, looking up the stairs, to where Henry would be if he wasn't amnesiac and spending the day with Hook at the docks.

"Do you know what day it is?"

Regina closes the door slowly, turns to take in the way Emma's fingers are twitching and her expression is lost in the past.

"I suppose Sunday is not the answer you're looking for?" Regina comes to stand beside her.

Emma shakes her head. She turns to look at Regina, eyes questioning, uncertain. "Have you ever been to church?"

"What?" The question is so far from what she is expecting that Regina actually looks surprised before the mask is back and she is in control.

Emma shakes her head, trying to find a better, less personal question. "Why are there no churches in Storybrooke?"

Regina is looking at her like she's gone mad. Perhaps she has.

"Christianity has famously persecuted witches. I doubt I would have been welcome if I had created such a place. I don't fancy giving the people of Storybrooke any more reason to have me burned at the stake."

Emma doesn't know what to say to that except an awkward, "Oh."

"Why the sudden interest in—"

"It's Easter."

Regina blinks. "...what?"

"Easter Sunday. It's a holiday. Everyone decorates eggs and eats chocolate shaped like bunnies and goes to church and..."

The blonde's words trail off. She doesn't know why she came here. It was stupid. She was feeling lonely and wanted to feel like she had someone to spend the holiday with, but she should have known Regina wouldn't understand...

"Eggs, you say?"

Emma is torn from her thoughts. "Yeah...?"

Regina walks toward the kitchen and Emma follows close behind, confused and a bit disoriented.

"And you decorate them? With paint?"

The sight of Regina rummaging through her refrigerator is almost too much to take in.

"Regina?"

"I'm assuming they have to be boiled. I will not have spoiled eggs sitting around this house—"

"Regina?"

The brunette is busy filling a pot of water. She has placed the eggs beside the stove and takes a moment to meet Emma's surprised gaze with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes?"

"What are you doing?"

The former queen smirked and waved a graceful hand in front if her, producing an ornate paintbrush out of thin air.

"What does it look like? Close your mouth, dear. It's unladylike to gape like a fish."

The blonde's mouth snapped shut.

And so, Emma spent the afternoon decorating Easter eggs with the former evil queen, talking and laughing like old friends.

Like family.


End file.
